Discusses the holiday Cinco de Mayo, celebrated by Mexicans and Mexican Americans in remembrance of the Mexican army's defeat of the French army in Puebla, Mexico, in 1862.

Follows a Hispanic American family in a small New Mexican community as they prepare for and celebrate the nine-day religious festival which occurs just before Christmas.

Corina's Abuela helps her select flowers that mean something to Corina from the garden for her Mexican flower crown that she will wear on her birthday, and explains the symbolic meaning of a birthday crown.

A tour-de-force second collection (after The House on Mango Street, 1989) by a Chicana poet who writes of life in Southwest border towns. Cisneros's tactile prose brings to vibrant being the sights, smells, joys, and heartaches of growing up female in a culture where women are both strong and victimized, men are unfaithful, and poverty is mitigated only by family, community, and religious ties. Despite hardship, the spirit remains vital, whether as...